Page 179

Anne’s face is blank, a porcelain mask that reveals nothing. No emotion.
“Nothing happened. You’re delusional,” my father says. “Mykel, your sister is upset. Grieving.”
“You married your wife and son’s murderer.” My voice raises. “You let your daughter grow up thinking it was an accident. Anne wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t?—”
“Stop.” Anne’s whisper cuts through me. “Please.”
Her eyes meet mine, something shifting in their depths, and all the pumped-up rage inside of me deflates a prickle of unease spreading down my spine instead.
“I know,” she says.
The world tilts.
“You… knew?” My voice barely comes out.
She nods, but her expression doesn’t crack.
Oh.
I feel it before I process it, the drop in my stomach, the way my ears start ringing, and the way the air vanishes.
She knew.
The floor tilts beneath me.
Twenty-one years of guilt. Twenty-one years of throwing up memories I couldn’t stomach. Twenty-one years of destroying myself for a secret that wasn’t even a secret.
Oh, God.
My throat burns with bile. The kind that rips you apart from the inside.
She knew. All this time, while I destroyed myself trying to protect her, trying to make up for my silence, she fucking knew.
Every Christmas dinner where, I couldn’t look her in the eye. Every birthday where, I watched her blow out candles, wishing for a mother who’d never come back. Every time I forced myself to throw up because the guilt was eating me alive?—
And she knew.
The cinnamon rolls at the funeral. The way Mom’s hand gripped my arm when I couldn’t stop throwing up in the bushes.“People are watching,” she’d said. But Anne already knew what kind of monster was holding my arm.
My fingers dig into my thighs under the table.
Twenty-one years of therapy. Of fighting my reflection in the mirror. Of hating myself for being complicit in Anne’s pain. And she just… knew?
The laugh that bubbles up tastes like copper. But do I even want to know? What if she’s known since that night? What if I’ve been carrying this burden, destroying myself over a secret that wasn’t even a secret?
Was it all just a waste? A pathetic attempt at redemption for a crime everyone already knew about?
My voice sounds small, foreign.”When?”
Anne’s lips twist into something between a smile and a grimace. “Nothing like thinking you’re dying to clear your conscience. Right, Dad?”
The pieces click into place, Anne’s coldness toward him, the tension at family dinners, and the way she avoided them. The heart attack.
Odd relief crashes through me. It wasn’t all a waste.
Dad’s shoulders slump, the fight draining from him. “I thought I was dying. I couldn’t… I couldn’t take it to my grave.”
“But you could let me carry it?” The words scratch my throat. “Let me think I was the only one who knew? That I was responsible for?—”